Breadcrumb

Ridgely Torrence: The Lesser Children

The Lesser Children

A Threnody at the Hunting Season

RidgelyTorrence

In the middle of August when the southwest windBlows after sunset through the leisuring air,And on the sky nightly the mythic hindLeads down the sullen dog star to his lair,After the feverous vigil of July,When the loud pageant of the year's high noonPassed up the ways of time to sing and part,Grief also wandered byFrom out the lovers and the leaves of June,And by the wizard spices of his hairI knew his heart was very Love's own heart.Deep within dreams he led me out of doorsAs from the upper vault the night outpours,And when I saw that to him all the skiesYearned as a sea asleep yearns to its shores,He took a little clay and touched my eyes.

What saw I then, what heard?Multitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred!The weaker brothers of our earthly breed;Watchmen of whom our safety takes no heed;Swift helpers of the wind that sowed the seedBefore the first field was or any fruit;Warriors against the bivouac of the weed;Earth's earliest ploughmen for the tender root,All came about my head and at my feetA thousand, thousand sweet,With starry eyes not even raised to plead;Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute!And I beheld and saw them one by onePass and become as nothing in the night.Clothed on with red they were who once were white;Drooping, who once led armies to the sun,Of whom the lowly grass now topped the flight:In scarlet faint, who once were brave in brown;Climbers and builders of the silent town,Creepers and burrowers all in crimson dye,Winged mysteries of song that from the skyOnce dashed long music down.

O who would take away music from the earth?Have we so much? Or love upon the hearth?No more — they faded;The great trees bending between birth and birthSighed for them, and the night wind's hoarse rebuffShouted the shame of which I was persuaded.Shall Nature's only pausing be by men invaded?Or shall we lay grief's fagots on her shoulders bare?Has she not borne enough?Soon will the mirroring woodland pools begin to con her,And her sad immemorial passion come upon her;Lo, would you add despair unto despair?Shall not the Spring be answer to her prayer?Must her uncomforted heavens overhead,Weeping, look down on tears and still beholdOnly wings broken or a fledgling dead,Or underfoot the meadows that wore goldDie, and the leaves go mourning to the mouldBeneath poor dead and desperate feetOf folk who in next summer's meadows shall not meet?Who has not seen in the high gulf of lightWhat, lower, was a bird, but nowIs moored and altered quiteInto an island of unshaded joy?To whom the mate below upon the boughShouts once and brings him from his high employ.Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloudWhere he from glory sprang and burned aloud,But took a little of the day,A little of the colored sky,And of the joy that would not stayHe wove a song that cannot die.Then, then — the unfathomable shame;The one last wrong arose from out the flame,The ravening hate that hated not was hurledBidding the radiant love once more beware,Bringing one more loneliness on the world,And one more blindness in the unseen air.Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying oathShed on such utter bitter any leaven.Only the pleading flowers that knew them bothHold all their bloody petals up to heaven.

Winds of the fall that all year to and froSomewhere upon the earth go wandering,You saw, you moaned, you know:Withhold not then unto all time to tellLest unborn others of us see this thing.Bring our sleek, comfortable reason low:Recount how souls grown tremulous as a bellCame forth each other and the day to greetIn morning air all Indian-Summer sweet,And crept upstream, through wood or field or brake,Most tremblingly to takeWhat crumbs that from the Master's table fell.Cry with what thronging thunders they were met,And hide not how the least leaf was made wet.Cry till no watcher says that all is wellWith raucous discord through the leaning spheres.But tellWith tears, with tearsHow the last man is harmed even as theyWho on these dawns are fire, at dusk are clay.Record the dumb and wise,No less than those who lived in singing guise,Whose choric hearts lit each wild green arcade.Make men to see their eyes,Forced to suspect behind each reed or roseThe thorn of lurking foes.And O, before the daylight goes,After the deed against the skies,After the last belief and longing dies,Make men again to see their eyesWhose piteous casements now all unafraidPeer out to that far verge where evermore,Beyond all woe for which a tear atones,The likeness of our own dishonor moans,A sea that has no bottom and no shore.

What shall be doneBy you, shy folk who cease thus heart by heart?You for whose fate such fate forever hovers?O little lovers,If you would still have nests beneath the sunGather your broods about you and depart,Before the stony forward-pressing facesInto the lands bereft of any sound;The solemn and compassionate desert places.Give unto men no more the strong delightTo know that underneath the frozen groundDwells the warm life and all the quick, pure lore.Take from our eyes the glory of great flight.Let us behold no morePeople untroubled by a Fate's veiled eyes,Leave us upon an earth of faith forlorn.No more wild tidings from the sweet far skiesOf love's long utmost heavenward endeavor.So shall the silence pour on us foreverThe streaming arrows of unutterable scorn.

Nor shall the cry of famine be a shieldThe altar of a brutish mood to hide.Stains, stains, upon the lintels of our doorsWail to be justified.Shall there be mutterings at the seasons' yield?Has eye of man seen bared the granary floors?Are the fields wasted? Spilled the oil and wine?Is the fat seed under the clod decayed?Does ever the fig tree languish or the vine?Who has beheld the harvest promise fade?Or any orchard heavy with fruit aswayWithered away?No, not these things, but grosser things than theseAre the dim parents of a guilt not dim;Ancestral urges out of old caves blowing,When Fear watched at our coming and our goingThe horror of the chattering face of Whim.Hates, cruelties new fallen from the treesWhereto we clung with impulse sad for love,Shames we have had all time to rid us of,Disgraces cold and sorrows long bewept,Recalled, revived, and kept,Unmeaning quarrels, blood-compelling lust,And snarling woes from our old home, the dust.

Yet even of these one saving shape may rise;Fear may unveil our eyes.For know you not what curse of blight would fallUpon a land lorn of the sweet sky racesWho day and night keep ward and seneschalUpon the treasury of the planted spaces?Then would the locust have his fill,And the blind worm lay tithe,The unfed stones rot in the listless mill,The sound of grinding cease.No yearning gold would whisper to the scythe,Hunger at last would prove us of one blood,The shores of dream be drowned in tides of need,Horribly would the whole earth be at peace.The burden of the grasshopper indeedWeigh down the green corn and the tender bud,The plague of Egypt fall upon the wheat,And the shrill nit would batten in the heat.

But you, O poor of deeds and rich of breath,Whose eyes have made our eyes a hue abhorred,Red, eager aids of aid-unneeding Death,Hunters before the Lord,If on the flinted marge about your soulsIn vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls,If from your trails unto the crimson goalsThe weeper and the weeping must depart,If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dartAnd darken all the dark autumnal air,Then, then — be fair.Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yewAnd at the root end fix an iron thorn,Then forth with rocking laughter of the hornAnd passing, with no belling retinue,All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew,Seek out some burly guardian of the hillsAnd set your urgent thew against his thew.Then shall the hidden wisdoms and the willsStrive, and bear witness to the trees and clodsHow one has dumb lore of the rocks and swalesAnd one has reason like unto the gods.Then shall the lagging righteousness ensue,The powers at last be equal in the scales,And the man's club and the beast's claw be flailsTo winnow the unworthy of the two.Then on the earth, in the sky and the heavenly courtThat broods behind it,Justice shall be awakened and aware,Then those who go forth greatly, seeking sport,Shall doubtless find it,And all things be fair.